Irrigation Contract Renewals Questioned

Questioning decades of practice and potentially opening new water supplies for cities and wildlife, federal officials are debating whether controversial Central Valley irrigation contracts require environmental impact statements.

Federal officials say the Environmental Protection Agency and Bureau of Reclamation are about to approve temporary extensions of federal contracts scheduled to expire this year.

However, the “short-term” extensions will be used to study how to correct environmental problems caused by diverting the upper San Joaquin River to arid but productive farms on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley from Madera to Bakersfield.

One way to ease those problems, conservationists have said, is to use less water on farms and send more down the virtually dry San Joaquin River. There, it can be pumped to cities or used to enhance bird and fish habitats that many believe have been devastated by water-diversion projects.

What Is at Stake

At stake is roughly 150,000 acre-feet of water annually, about 75% of what the giant Metropolitan Water District of Southern California distributed last year throughout the Los Angeles-to-San Diego megalopolis.

An acre-foot is one year’s supply of water for two families or one-fourth of an acre of alfalfa.

Redistributing California’s water resources to better balance the needs of cities, farms and wildlife is the topic of a multiyear series of hearing being held by the State Water Resources Control Board. San Joaquin River water rights are a critical element in that redistribution.

The joint EPA-Interior discussions, begun earlier this month, were spurred Thursday when U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton issued a temporary restraining order forbidding the renewal of existing pacts with 28 irrigation districts.

Conservationists, sportsmen and commercial fishermen have filed suit in U.S. District Court, seeking to block renewal of the 40-year contracts. They contend, as does the EPA, that renewals require environmental review, but Karlton declined to rule in the matter until after further arguments March 17.

Deliveries to Continue

In the meantime, Karlton ordered the bureau to continue water deliveries at existing volumes and prices--an order necessitated by the expiration Tuesday of the first of the contracts, with the Orange Cove Irrigation District. The other contracts will expire over the next six years.

Coincidentally, Tuesday also is when the Council on Environmental Quality, a three-member board within the executive office of the President, is required to decide whether it will accede to the EPA’s earlier request to arbitrate its squabble with the Department of the Interior.

The EPA appealed to the council earlier this month, arguing that the renewal of certain 40-year irrigation contracts require environmental impact statements. The department’s Bureau of Reclamation planned to renew the pacts without such documents, contending that the contract terms were struck before environmental laws were passed and thus were exempt from the laws requiring impact statements.

Contracts for water from the bureau’s Friant Dam near Fresno expire this year, and farmers were eager to automatically renew their generous terms for a second 40-year period. Significantly reduced water supplies could force them to plant less-profitable crops and might make some farmland uneconomical.

The EPA objected. Siding with conservationists, Acting Administrator John A. Moore said in a letter to the council that “renewal of these contracts is unsatisfactory from the standpoint of environmental quality” and needs to be studied in light of the state’s proposed redistribution of water rights.

Challenge Renewals

Meanwhile, conservationists, sportsmen and commercial fishermen challenged the renewals in federal court. That suit produced Karlton’s ruling Thursday.

Despite a temporary setback in court, lawyer Hamilton Candee on the Natural Resources Defense Council said the compromise being discussed by EPA and the Interior Department is encouraging to environmentalists and sportsmen.

He said elements of the compromise represents a significant and fundamental shift in attitude by the Interior Department, which only weeks ago denied any obligation to make its established practices conform to environmental laws.

Bureau of Reclamation spokesman Mark Stevenson in Washington declined to discuss specifics of the negotiations, except to confirm that the agency now concedes some obligation to environmental law as well as its customers. He added that an agreement with EPA is expected to be made public before Tuesday.